Body of missing Smithfield man found in abandoned home

Published 2:27 pm Tuesday, November 1, 2022

A Smithfield man missing since early October was discovered dead over the weekend in a vacant house.

According to police, officers responded on Oct. 29 to an abandoned house at 202 West St. after a neighbor reported smelling a “foul odor” coming from the home.

Virginia’s Office of the Chief Medical Examiner identified the body on Oct. 31 as 40-year-old Leondus Holloman, whose family had reported him missing on Oct. 11.

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He’d been last seen alive around 3 p.m. Oct. 4 in the 300 block of Middle Street roughly a block away from the house where his body was found. Holloman’s body was found lying face down in the front room of the home, police said in an Oct. 31 press release.

Holloman’s death is still under investigation and hasn’t yet been ruled a homicide, suicide or accidental. Police, when soliciting the public’s help on Facebook in locating the then-missing Holloman on Oct. 19, had stated there was “reasonable cause for concern for his safety.”

There’s “no way to tell” how long Holloman’s body had been lying in the house, and “no witnesses to him entering,” Smithfield Police Lt. Patrick Araojo told The Smithfield Times by phone Nov. 1.

The house was “open to the environment” and “not secured,” Araojo said, noting police had found animal droppings within the house and some of its doors off.